


To Impart The Heart Entire

by hitlikehammers



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: (Incorrectly-Assumed) Unrequited Love, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eggsy Sorting Through Harry's Things, Harry Hart Lives, Love Letters, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-05 18:24:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5385857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t mean to find it. Shouldn't even have to be the one here <i>to</i> find it, by rights—no. No, it should not be Eggsy’s place to go through the possessions of one Harry Hart after his tragic, untimely passing. Ain’t even just the pressure, the aching in his chest that says as much, neither. Naw, this shit should be someone else’s gig. Logically speaking and such. It really should.</p>
<p>And he doesn't <i>mean</i> to find them, honestly: the papers. The letters. Doesn't mean to. Knows he should burn them or sumthin'. Respect Harry's privacy.</p>
<p>But Harry Hart's fuckin' <i>dead</i>. And maybe Eggsy’s dramatic as fuck, okay, sure, but hand to god: he <i>swears</i> he feels just as dead himself, now. Without <i>him</i>. So of course. Shit. </p>
<p>‘Course Eggsy fucking <i>looks</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Eggsy Doesn't Mean To

**Author's Note:**

> Written in-transit to pass time. Thus: written on a phone, and likely riddled with typos. I'll get to those eventually, probably.

He doesn’t mean to find it. Shouldn't even have to be the one here _to_ find it, by fuckin’ rights. They’d known each other months, and barely that—staring, wishing, _wanting_ a man too still in a hospital bed notwithstanding. Falling arse over fuck-not, nearly literal as shit down the steps as soon as he was released from holding aside, naw. This should not be Eggsy’s fuckin’ place, man, not even close. Not even, just not, he—

No. No, it should not be Eggsy’s place to go through the possessions of one Harry Hart after his tragic, untimely passing.

Ain’t even just the pressure, the aching in his chest that says as much, neither. Naw, this shit should be someone else’s gig. Logically speaking and shit. 

It really fuckin’ should.

And the insects mounted, the stuffed dog, the collections of useless fuckery, immaculately kept like every knick-knack mattered—truly fuckin’ made a difference in the world at large—all that's genuinely the strangest of what Eggsy finds. It's honestly most overrun by clothes—silk ties and bulletproof suits and even regular ties and regular suits and they're so fuckin’ well cut, bespoke to the very definition of the term: they recall the man, the body, the beating heart far too clear, too…

Fuck. _Fuck_. 

Eggsy takes a deep breath, and tells himself it's the nonexistent dust in this immaculate fucking house that's making his eyes burn. Tear up and whatever. 

Just, like, dust. 

You know how that shit does. 

But Eggsy’s been told more’n once that variety’s the spice of life, that was how his mum explained a new bloke every week when he was too young to know better than to ask. So, right. Not done with the bedroom, not even through the closet, whatever. He'll come back to it. 

Variety. 

It's dustier downstairs, apparently, because there's just one room left. Dust everywhere. His cheeks are goddamn sopping for it. 

Jesus _fuck_. 

First time, he'd only managed to get the laptop out. He'd collapsed into a heap and shivered in the corner until he fell asleep, until merlons shook him awake too far into the next morning to be natural. 

Second, third, and fourth times, he'd moved shy around until his lungs decided being there was grounds in itself for going on strike, until he couldn't breathe. Eggsy figures probably he was allergic to something Harry in that study. Something in any one of the cabinets and drawers currently staring him down, currently threatening his lungs, currently twisting in his chest, magnetic to the shards in his heart where it draws the muscles in between the ribs, contorts it and makes it choke and tear and break all over again, every goddamn time. 

This isn't Eggsy's place. This should not be Eggsy’s _task._

There's nothing to blame the sob he coughs, trips around on. There's no lie he can tell himself that even remotely worth the effort in telling. 

He reaches, half blinded, eyes swimming, for the nearest drawer pull. Yanks; expects it to be locked; there's a keyhole waiting to grant entrance, so he expects resistance. 

And that's why he damn well tears the drawer off its track when it gives without resistance, unexpected. 

Well, shit. 

So: like Eggsy said. He doesn't _mean_ to find it. 

Doesn't meant to find _any_ of it. 

______________________________

To say that it looks private is an understatement. To say that the drawer was left unlocked as an uncharacteristic oversight in the midst of crisis and circumstance is obvious as fuck. The fact that Eggsy should probably burn the documents and respect Harry’s intentions and wishes, if not his actions, is clear as fuckin’ crystal. 

But Eggsy’s not a moral man, not really. And Eggsy likes seeing what he gets his hands on, what he swipes: point of pride, to take what's not meant for taking, to see what's not meant for seeing. 

And Harry Hart is fucking _dead_ , and maybe Eggsy’s dramatic as fuck, okay, sure, but hand to god: he swears he feels just as dead, himself, now. Without him. 

So maybe it's like rote memory, or desperation, or the hope that whatever is written will come out in Harry’s voice. 

That if Harry really didn't want eyes on it, then he'd come back and stop it. Stop Eggsy. 

He'd come _back_. 

So whatever. Whatever. 

He grabs the first page: handwritten. The curls and slants of Harry’s letters make him weak, make his throat close tight, because of course. 

‘Course Eggsy fucking _looks_.


	2. Letter The First

_You are a paradox if ever one walked this Earth._

_The way your hair falls is impossible; its shade something mellow and otherworldly, not quite any real colour I’ve ever seen or know outside the vague ethereal glow of a dream. The sway of your hips and the roll of your pace, your very gait is an enigma. The set of your shoulders. The stretch of your spine._

_Control. I pride myself upon my control. My control over the ways in which I elect to forfeit that control. _

_And yet: I nearly reached to brush that hair and better see your face. Your cheekbones. Your lips._

_I imagine the plush of them, the pillowed creases stretching wide toward something greater than joy: greater for the fact that you shape it, for the fact that you feel it._

_The hollow fantasy, the foolish notion that I might find how to elicit that joy within you. Spark it in the heart you can't imagine, cannot possibly know gleams quite so clear and bright inside your eyes. _

_Dear god, do not allow me say upon your eyes. _

_I don’t know if I am lost or losing, brilliant or desperate, or addled for reasons unknown: acting rashly. Dangerous. I don’t know why I brought you here._

_I nearly reached. Beyond my own control, I nearly reached to brush your hair. To touch._

_Your terrify me, you impossible thing. Paradox—if ever one walked this earth._

_I haven't seen you in hours, now._

_My heart rate is still so far from its norm it should likely concern me._

_It doesn't._

_And that, too, terrifies me in the extreme._

_My pulse is a drum, an omen in my ear when I try to rest my head: distracting, until I place a hand to my chest and feel it properly beneath my fingertips and lend it the credence it’s due. Hold its weight and recognise what it means. Where it can lead. Where I cannot let it lead. _

_My pulse is a drum against the perfect purse of your lips. Foolish. Reckless. Impossible._

_I will not sleep tonight._


	3. In Which Jealousy’s A Bitch, Ain’t It

Jesus fuckin’ _chirst_ , it does. 

It _does_ come out in Harry's voice. 

Every pause and breath, every space where his heart would've beat and tasked the rhythm: Eggsy can hear it. 

Eggsy thinks he'll be sick for not-the-first-time as a result of this fucking room, and what it holds. What it means.

But the thing is this, right: Eggsy is not so fuckin’ blind, or stubborn, or small-minded, and so for as much as the words spin a world where Harry speaks smooth like silk and whiskey and the touch of a palm to a cheek just so, where Harry fuckin’ Hart would _ever_ say those words, let alone in Eggsy's presence, with Eggsy eavesdropping like a right fuckin’ prat on something so intimate—as much as the words churn in his stomach and burn in his throat, rise up from the paper and try to lodge in his sick-squelching heart where it forgets right and proper how to beat in the now—even for _all_ of that and the way the bile’s rising: if he looks and he tries and he pays the fuck attention, and yeah, paying attention’s starting to eat grooves into his bins, starting to haunt him in his sleep, but yeah, when he pays _attention_ , he can suss out what’s at the bottom of it, really. What makes up the dregs that get left, even now.

And it's probably ‘cause Eggsy has known it his whole fucking life, that he can feel it apart from everything else: less, by so goddamn much that it's laughable, but it's there. Definitely there, like it was in school when the other boys had dads and not just mums, or worse, _Deans_ ; when he had to choose between lifting a pair of trainers or going with tears in the soles; when he wanted to stay in the service and he was the only one who hadn't outgrown guilt, or maybe fear; whenever a bird or bloke looked twice his way in a pub, only to look last somewhere else.

Yeah, Eggsy knows the feeling that burns beneath everything else, threatening to set him half ablaze. 

He can see it, too, in his minds’ eye: see _them_ —this mystery object of Harry’s affection...attraction? Obsession? Whatever. Whatever it is, Eggsy can fucking _see_ them, clear as day.

The girl’s a blonde, but only just. Dark like leaves get in Autumn, but light somehow too—like how sunshine makes yellows look white. Not too tall, but not too short; broad shouldered. Thin-lipped, but for a certain kind of hidden cunning. Eyes that change shade with the lighting, with her outfits, with her mood: but always sparkle. Bounce in her step, but a strength there. Tight-coiled-like, snake and venom. Dangerous, but not to you. Not to you, Harry, fuck all, can’t you see she wants you, can’t you see that everyone _wants_ you—

And the man. The man’s tall-dark-and-fuckable, because Eggsy’s got a vast and vivid imagination but it’s so filled to the goddamn brim with one image, one thought, one, once—

Fuck.

The man. Right.

The man’s suave and stately and with the hint of a grin on his eyes that could take someone's heartbeat and ratchet it up past ten: suit clinging to him in ways a good tailor’d frown upon, Eggsy knows now, but hot as all hell, that arse, the hug of his trousers at the hip, the thigh, the unbuttoned neck of his shirt, the stretch of chest and the peek of skin, lips wet were Eggsy’s throat goes sore and his mouth goes dry, and Eggsy throws the broguing in on the fucking shoes just to prove he can, fuck all, he _can_.

And the paper’s old; yellowed, a little, and monogramed: Eggsy wonders if they were kept for sentiment, for guilt, like the Sun articles—a trophy.

A warning?

But there’s age on the edges and Eggsy wonders, maybe, if Harry’d proposed other bright young things before him; had to've. Wonders if Harry’d loved and lost. Wonders who was worth the words beyond just the feeling; who made feelings pressed down deep not e-fucking _nough_.

And Eggsy can see ‘em. What drove Harry to desperation, to the poetry locked away tight. 

And fuck all if Eggsy’s chest ain’t tight for it, too. For everything. 

Fuck it. Mother _fuck_.

Jealousy’s a bitch, ain’t it. 

He grabs the next leaf.


	4. Letter The Second

_Assumptions are fascinating things. And yet: in this line of work, they can get you killed._

_They will get you killed. _

_You say things that you think I can't hear. Think I won't notice. Think I'm too far or too gone or too distracted to see where they speak in your face, where your eyes scream it for you._

_I wonder if others see, or if I'm simply so attuned to you, so enamoured with you beyond all reason or logic or sense that I can do nothing but see. _

_I dream about you. Even with eyes closed, I see you._

_You think your words are lost. Idle. Inane. You don't try to smooth your tone, your beautiful lilt around the edges of each syllable: the heart of you from where first it beat and good god, I am lost to you, and I cannot justify it—yet, in the face of YOU, I cannot imagine any sane being in the world would ask it of me. Justification._

_One doesn't even need eyes to see it. The why. _

_But you are wholly yourself when you believe no one is watching. Listening._

_I was listening. I heard you, every moment. I hear you, every breath._

_And you should know that your presence speaks louder than your words._


	5. In Which His Mallet-Fuckin'-Heart Is A Determined Fuckin’ Sod

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one wanted to be difficult. Because it wanted to make this fic LONG, and this fic isn't made to be LONG. So I had to square with this chapter, see. Had to wait it out until it understood who was boss, etc etc. Or whatnot.
> 
> In short: sorry for the wait.

The floor’s hard on Eggsy’s back. His cheeks are wet, but for as old as the house is, there’s no draught. The salt sticks to his five o’clock shadow. It’s fuckin’ unpleasant, is what it is.

His heart’s a goddamn mallet that won’t stop pounding, too, but it’s sick-like all the same, like there’s a hole in it leaking blood with every frantic pump, and y’know, that’s fucking’ unpleasant, too. 

He’s gonna die, here. He thought maybe he’d died in all the ways that mattered when he watched Harry’s blood splatter across a screen—but then there’d been things after. Big things. He hadn’t died. Just wanted to.

Here, though. This. Like this. _With_ this. 

Dead. Yep.

He’d told himself all the real things, the stupid things; lies, lots of lies, and the certain things as well as the questions: Harry wouldn’t want a fuckin’ pleb like you—real. Harry maybe could feel sorry enough for you to look twice, and maybe at least forgive you for not shooting your fucking dog because the friends yous got ain’t many and JB’s a real fucking pal, you gotta _understand_ —stupid.

Question: they’d worked together?

Because: they can get you killed. Like they both know what Harry does, what Harry is—and if they both know, than they’re of the same cloth, yeah? And who else would Harry be around enough to say that he hears what isn’t said, or what is and isn’t noticed—that _he_ notices. And maybe Eggsy’d been telling himself that it was a moot point, that they’d never have nuffin’, right, ‘cause they worked together, because Harry mentored his sorry arse, because there were lines and while Eggsy might not have the care or breeding to give a right fuck, Harry would. Did.

Harry did, so. Didn’t fuckin’ matter, one way or the other, even if (lie) Harry maybe (lie) would have (lie) could have (stupid) felt.

Something.

But yeah. There’s that struck right out as a thing, yeah. And there’s the truth staring him bald-faced and unrepetent and not giving a rat’s fuckin’ arse if it’s ripping Eggsy’s heart out and makin’ a mess of everything for how the blood spurts wild.

_Over Harry’s dead body would you ever stand a chance._

And lo and behold: _that_ shit was certain.

God. _God_. Just, just...

Holy _fuck_.

Eggsy didn’t think he had tears left, honestly. His mallet-heart, though: it’s a determined fuckin’ sod, isn’t it? 

Squeezes out what’s left in him ‘til he ain’t nothin’ really. Corpse on the ground. Clear instead of red spelling out his end. It squeezes everything until it rattles in the empty dark. Drains him dry.

Right down to the motherfuckin’ dregs.

______________________________

It’s like dry heaving, right? Painful as hell, but nothing in it.

That’s what the thumping of his heart is, now. Hurts like a bitch, like nothing he’s ever known, ribs well bruised for it more than any kick or fist could manage, and he’s lightheaded, he’s wrung out, there’s no more blood of sweat in him, and tears are all he’s made of now so them’s only there ‘cause they have to be.

Eggsy don’t know nothing else, honest. To be fair.

His hand finds a stray paper as it clutches blindly for something that’ll stop this, that’ll make this come to its close. His fingers spread out without permission: the letters, yeah. The stack is fanned out on the floor, must’ve dropped when Eggsy’d done the same. But they’re still in order.

Eggsy swallows: dry. Feels the pulse in his throat like it’ll break through the skin any minute, and Eggsy’d let it, too.

Eggsy’d fucking let it.

He fumbles the sheet of paper to his side, to his chest where he holds it, just a second—his heart’s frantic enough that the force hits through and crinkles against the brittle parchmenty bullshit. Eggsy can’t see, because it’s dark. Eggsy can’t see, because tears are all he has.

He lifts the motherfucking paper, though.

He don’t know what that means.


	6. Letter The Third

_Would you believe that I understand it? That I know why you couldn’t, that I appreciate, admire, cherish…_

_love..._

_That I love you for it? Would you believe?_

_We will never be what lulls me to sleep after the worst of days, what brings me to life over and again—I know this. I am not so lost to this feeling to be blind to the inevitable, to the facts._

_I am not always as prone to reticience, to sealing my lips against words that never should break free. My tongue is better shaped to lies. It’s safer._

_When the heart breaks, you see, it spreads outward. It escapes unending._

_Best to let it escape in disguise; under cover of safety._

_Sometimes the costs are greater than others._

_Sometimes, I, sometimes..._

_I am a coward in some things, you understand. All mortal men are cowards in some things._

_Most are cowards when death approaches._

_I traded that fear for the fear of bleeding alone._

_I cut what cuts me deepest. I lash out when I hurt most fully._

_You couldn’t do it. You cannot do it. You’ll never do it._

_You’ll never be that man, I know. I am sorry, that I asked you to be other—to be less—than you are._

_Stars above: and I love you._


	7. In Which There Is Nothing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to the anonymous young men on the Jubilee line, whose loud conversation obliquely sparked how this goes down.

Eggsy’s chest hurts something fuckin’ _fierce_ when he comes to again.

Typical.

But he guesses if a mission’s gonna kill him—now or then or later—it might as well be this one.

Anyway.

The paper is wrinkled, now, torn-through in the places where his fingers clutched too tight, needed too much and thought they could grasp at something long gone in the ink, in the pulp of the parchment: thought they could make the words mean something they couldn’t, for someone they didn’t.

Fuckin’ hell.

It takes minutes, rather than moments—could be hours—to lift himself, to sit up and to focus on the room around him: unchanged, except that everything is changed, because Eggsy was in love with this fucker, wasn’t he? Nothing shallow like infatuation or lust without substance or a childish little crush, naw, he couldn’t be that lucky. And not fairy tale love, like it should’ve been, by rights, if not for content than for sheer lack of time: it shoulda been head over heels, arse over tits can’t breathe because in a single moment it manifests and it’s perfect so much that it cannot be real, and if it isn’t real then it cannot break him, if it isn’t real then it’ll die in good time. It’ll fade.

It’ll pass.

Nope, Eggsy drew the short fuckin’ straw an’ in the course of no time at all, he was lost, wann’t he? And hell, he _wishes_ that all the dark bits, that all the bad, all the less-than-shiny parts of Harry fuckin’ Hart had been enough to put him off. That Harry’s disappointment wasn’t part and fuckin’ parcel to his praise, to his belief that you were better, that you could be _more_. He wishes seeing Harry broken and paler than the hospital linens had put him off, proved it was just a physical thing that was easy to turn away from when there were bruises and breaks in the skin and so much silence that Eggsy couldn’t hear that smooth-silk voice; he wishes it’d turned him off instead of breaking his heart and taking every skill he’d learn to sneak into a place he wasn’t meant to be, every day he’d lived without sleep the night before and shrugged it off, ever lesson in shaking exhaustion the marines had leant him: he wishes it had turned him away, instead of breaking his heart so that the only thing in his mind was to go to him, whether Harry could ever know it or not, to speak to him, whether Harry could hear him or not: to watch him, because he didn’t know how to breathe around the ache in him if he couldn’t just see the rise and fall of a chest he barely knew, but that he _knew_ , somehow, was everything. Held everything. 

_His_ everything. 

And he wishes...

Fuck it, no. No he don’t.

He don’t wish none of that at all.

His eyes are sore, and his face is numb, and he only knows he’s crying again, slow and steady and quiet-like, because his heartbeat’s heavy at his neck, and it strains against the trails of salt on the skin. He props himself up on his elbows and inhales slow—his lungs don’t take in much, but it’s something.

And something’s better than the nothing that’s around him, now; the nothing of everything else.

The rustle of papers shifting draws his attention, and he lets the breath out slow, steeling himself: he doesn’t know why he keeps reading, keeps torturing himself with these words that he wishes were _his_ to have, and hold, and _hear_ maybe, in that sweettone of Harry’s that haunts his waking hours as quick as his sleep—he thinks he deserves it, though.

He thinks it’s maybe the only way he has left to know the man who took Eggsy’s heart with him beyond the grave.

So he grabs for the paper that waits for him, squints to focus through the way his eyes won’t quit watering. 

He squints harder; harder still.

Don’t change the fact that the parchment—same as all the rest, monogrammed and stained with age—is blank.

He grabs for the stack—not thick, exactly, but substantial enough—and leaves through it quick, draws blood with the slice of the paper’s edge to his skin. But nothing. 

There’s nothing. 

Eggsy tears about five sheets in two trying to claw words onto them, to resurrect the dead just a little longer, but it’s clear: there were never many confessions offered. And the paper was old, but the words—the words timeless. Eggsy would never know if someone stole Harry heart as a young boy, or as a seasoned man: if someone had Harry’s heart in the now, before the end, and Eggsy had walked past them on a daily basis. If Eggsy had looked them in the eyes, if Eggsy had—

Something shrinks inside him, withers: something in him falls apart and cuts on the downslide that he didn’t think was left to break. Goddamnit.

He rips the rest of the papers in half out of sheer fucking spite for the universe, for loving, for living in itself.

God _damnit_.

______________________________

There are only pieces, now. Of anything, really. Probably.

Fuckin’ dramatic, that is, though. What he means is the paper.

There are only bits of paper left, in pieces.

He doesn’t know what possesses him, after hours. Minutes. Seconds. Heartbeats still too _heavy_ to swallow through. He doesn’t know. 

But he picks up the paper in pieces, and lines the pieces up, and he grabs for the fountain pen at the top of the desk, mostly for show.

His fingers don’t grip tight enough, and his wrist trembles something horrible, but whatever takes him, and leads him, in this, whatever it is: it’s beyond him, and fuck if he has it in him to fight it, so.

So he touches ink to yellowed paper and shakes through his own heartsick words, ‘cause there ain’t nothin’ for it, really.

But there ain’t nothin’ left against it, neither.


	8. Letter The Last

_This is bullshit, Harry. S’fucked, is what it is. It’s all fucked._

_I don’t do this shit. This isn’t what I’m made for, y’know? I’m not like this. I’m not built this way._

_I can’t do this. Not without you._

_Even if we was never gonna be what I wanted, even if I wasn’t ever gonna say what it was I felt when I looked at you, wasn’t gonna tell you that you made me warm and you grabbed between my ribs with your eyes and made my heart go crazy like it never went before: even if I never got to know what it felt like to touch and be touched by those hands or know what you tasted like in the morning—don’t care. I don’t fuckin’ care that I loved you with whatever shitty offer I got to give: just you being there. Just you breathing in the same room. The same postcode. The same planet, Harry, and giving even half a damn that was there, somewhere, too—that’s all I ever woulda asked. Swear down, I never would have needed more._

_But now, there’s no you. There’s no you, and I can’t._

_I knew I loved you, even when I hid from it. Even when I was a fucking coward. Couldn’t shoot the dog, couldn’t weigh the blank, couldn’t make it up to you, couldn’t breathe around the way your eyes cut sharper than those words, couldn’t…_

_I don’t even fuckin’ know. But I loved you._

_I fucking love you._

_And maybe your heart got broke ages ago, and you never looked another way again. Or maybe you’re still stuck on this bloke, or this bird, or whoever, I don’t know. Maybe they’re hurting like I’m hurting, now. I’m not saying without them, you’da looked my way once. But, shit. Shit._

_I wanted more time. I needed more time. Just to be near you. Just to love everything about you, your good parts and the shit parts and the fucked parts and the bright ones—I needed more time, Harry. ‘Cause mum always said love's a thing that can be felt, even when it ain’t given back._

_I wanted to give you everything, ‘til I was run dry._

_Fucking hell._

_I don’t know what I’m doin’ here, Harry. I don’t know why I’m the one they sent. Maybe this is the final test, for me: a redo, see if I survive._

_I’da shot the dog before I took this, Harry. It woulda hurt like hell, and I’da never forgiven myself, but._

_I’da shot the fucking dog._


	9. In Which There Are Things, At This Juncture, That Must Be Made Very Clear

He wakes slowly, pen still in hand.

He doesn’t feel any better, exactly. A little more hollow, even, maybe.

But a little less heavy, in return. So.

It’s dark—he’d thought he’d left the light on; middle of the night, and he sighs, turns over and slides a hand under the pillow at his cheek, holds it close and nestles under the blanket just a little tighter, just a little more desperate to escape the world at large for a little longer, just a bit—

Wait.

Eggsy knocks everything—the pen, the paper, the pillow itself—to the floor, trying to figure out how the fucking _shit_ any of it got there. He didn’t grab a pillow. And the blanket, he couldn’t have ever got that shit around himself at that angle, and he’s a flexible fuck.

No pun intended, except, well. 

Works both ways.

Still. Pillow, blanket: from nowhere. 

He’s on his feet in a second, mind sharpening at impossible speeds as he gropes around for a gun he knows he set aside when he first arrived, fuck knows how long ago, now—all blends together, all bullshit, all hurting; he’s on his feet in a fuckin’ _second_ because he didn’t do this. This wasn’t him.

It takes a few moments to realize that the pillow he didn’t grab for himself started out as torn paper with no comfort to give. 

But the paper ain’t under the pillow.

The paper’s in the middle of the desk.

And the writing turned up to the ceiling on it? That?

That shit ain’t his.

Something in him wants to believe that it knows whose it is, though. Heart sloshing out a fucking death-knoll, throwing itself on the goddamn pyre of his ribs and what-ifs and movies-like-that, yeah.

His heart wants to go the fuck out on the stupid fuckin’ notion that it knows the impossible.

That enough fuckin’ tears can wake back up the dead.

And Eggsy, well.

Eggsy’s a stupid bastard, and he’s dumb enough to listen to it. To take that siren song and run.

The paper’s in his hands, and they shake enough to rip it before he slams those hands to the tabletop in order to keep them still.

He’ll never fucking learn.

______________________________

_There are things I feel compelled, at this juncture, to make very clear._

_First: Before you become incredibly agitated regarding this point, you need to know I had absolutely no idea you were not informed of my convalescence, let alone my continued status at large. I was told you were on a mission—I was proud of your accomplishments and your resilience._

_I missed you nonetheless. Selfishly, I wanted you near me._

_I could hear you, you know. When you visited after the explosion. I wanted more than anything to hear you, these past months._

_In any case, know that I will be expressing ineffable disapproval regarding this course of conduct and secrecy—I have, however, only been discharged three hours ago, and find myself much more exhausted by the journey home than I’d anticipated._

_Please don’t repeat that. Particularly in front of Merlin, whose assistance I was very firm in declining._

_Second: You’re a bloody fool and a piss-poor spy if you couldn’t decipher who the letters you’ve found—and obviously read—were written about. If you couldn’t understand from the start that they were for you._

_Third: Please believe me when I say I very rarely employ such purple prose for any purpose, let alone to address the things I value most._

_You were something new, however. You are something I have never known before._

_Your value is unprecedented._

_Fourth: I tried to wake you. You wouldn’t stir. I kissed your temple and you hummed, but that was all I could draw from you. I’m afraid I am still recovering beyond the point of carrying you to bed, or even to the sofa—I tried to make you comfortable._

_Fifth: I, in turn, found myself a bit too drained for the stairs. And am therefore on the sofa, should you feel compelled to find me._

_And last: I love you. I am in love with you. In case that was unclear. And seeing the paleness of your skin and the red around your eyes above the bruises of sleeplessness, seeing the wet marks on the paper itself and the words you wrote in kind: if indeed—beyond all reason—you want me, Eggsy._

_If you want me, then I am yours._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, I do believe we've reached the end, lovelies. Thank you so much for your kind words throughout <3

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
